Creating Online Slide Shows... For Free
The folks at Real Networks, who pioneered streaming sound and video on the web, have a new tool out that lets you blend pictures and narration to create slide shows. To show how well it works, they're asking you to submit your stories as slide shows for a chance to win some great new equipment. Shelley McIntyre of Real says it's easy to do...
"Well it's a drag and drop interface, so you would open the tool and drag images in either JPEG or bitmap format onto the tool, shuffle them around, do some editing. And you can also use the recorder feature to do voice annotation for each slide as well as background music track for the entire presentation. So not only do you have sequencing images that are streaming along one after the other, but you can have a voice track and a music track behind it to make it more interesting."
The basic version of RealSlideshow is free from real.com. You can use it to put your own slideshows of birthdays, vacations or you name it on the web to share with people you know.
"So you can, from the tool, automatically upload all of your files to either a Real server, PhotoPoint, PhotoHighway or GeoCities GeoMedia to host your files for you."
For the contest, from now through November 17th, you can submit slideshow stories in one of five categories.